Dreams of a Mother

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Akbari Begum Khan, third from left, with her family members at their home in South Delhi on June 18.

NEW DELHI - Akbari Begum Khan was exhausted by a long morning of cooking for several homes, where she works as a maid. The 46-year-old woman in a white and blue nightie sprawled on the hard floor of her small rented room. Mrs. Khan snored through the unruly game of carom being played by Sahil, her 3-year-old adopted son, and Nashad, her 6-year-old grandson.

Outside, a punishing afternoon sun beat down on the vegetable vendors and butchers whose shops lined the narrow, dusty street, where she lived in a cramped room in Madangir area in south Delhi. Mrs. Khan’s room, fortified by bottles of hair oil and prickly heat powder, steel utensils and a whirring plastic cooler, was deliciously dim and cool.

Every morning, Mrs. Khan wakes up before dawn and walks about four kilometers (2.5 miles) to work. She covers the distance in an hour, plodding along slowly because of her worsening diabetes. She walks back in the afternoon to prepare lunch at home and to spend time with her children. She sets off again at about five in the evening to cook dinner for her clients and then makes the journey back on foot by 9 pm or 10 pm at night.

With two of her eldest daughters now married, one to an office manager and the second to an engineer, Mrs. Khan talked about reaching the halfway mark on the road to fulfilling her responsibilities. She still has to raise her 16-year-old daughter, Nazia, her 13-year-old son, Anas, and Sahil, whom she adopted after his mother died during childbirth.

“Sometimes, I don’t have the energy to go for work. But when I wake up and see my children sleeping in a line, I know I have to get up,” said Mrs. Khan. “I walk these roads every day.”

She makes about 6,000 rupees, or $100, a month. She pays 3,000 rupees, or $ 50, in rent. An auto-rickshaw would cost her rupees 3,000 or $50, every month, a public bus would cost rupees 600 or $10 per monthâ€"expenses she can’t afford. She walks.  “On winter mornings, the roads are empty. And then it’s the same at night,” said Mrs. Khan. “I know it’s not safe. I just think of God, and keep walking.”

Domestic workers in India are subjected to poor working conditions, low wages, and abusive language. But Mrs. Khan is what her employers described as one of Delhi’s modern maids, who insist on a reasonable salary and being treated with respect. Mrs. Khan takes care to dress well, and often uses hand me downs from her employers. “I don’t feel like a beggar inside but like a king,” she said. “If you take away the wealth of a king, you cannot take away dignity. So even if I have been hungry for four days, you can’t look at me or my children and say we are poor.”

According to Indian laws, maids don’t qualify for minimum wage rights, but employers in more socially conscious homes are changing their behavior toward them. The biggest changes are in households where both the husband and wife work, and such professional couples are dependent on maids and nannies to take care of the house and their children. It has increased the bargaining power of domestic help. Some maids are able to secure between 8,000 rupees to 12,000 rupees a month.

Mrs. Khan used to make 8,000 rupees a month by working in four homes. But she recently lost a client, who found someone younger and more agile, and so her monthly earnings are down to 6,000 rupees.

Maids and male servants traditionally sat on the floor while speaking to their employers. But increasingly, the help is no longer tolerating abusive language or being overly servile.

Mrs. Khan perched herself on the sofa in the drawing room while discussing the household chores with one of her employers, a young couple. The husband is a corporate lawyer and the wife works in the government. They requested not to be identified to protect their privacy.

“We are very impressed by her strength and determination to provide for her family,” said the wife. “We attended her girl’s marriage this year. She is so smart that even with her meager resources, she managed to pull off a good wedding.”

At Mrs. Khan’s home, however, nobody but her immediate family knows that she works as a maid. “They would mock me and shame my children,” she said. “I know there is dignity in all kind of work. But I still feel ashamed that at my age, I am sweeping and cleaning toilets. At times, my girls offered to help because I can no longer bend easily, but I don’t let them.”

Mrs. Khan came to Delhi in 1999 with her children after fleeing her husband’s home. They lived in a conservative Muslim community in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married at age 11 to her teenage cousin, and her first child was born when she was 16.

Her husband, she recalled, had a good heart but was a drunkard who used to beat her badly. “He would beat me with anything he could find,” she said. Mrs. Khan described being desperately unhappy at her in-laws’ home, where she remained fully veiled and rarely moved outside her home. “It was suffocating,” she said. She decided to leave her alcoholic husband when he stopped providing for their children.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Mrs. Khan buying mangoes near her house in South Delhi.

When Mrs. Khan came to Delhi, she found work checking for damaged products in a sporting goods factory. But after her eyesight weakened a few years ago, she found work as a maid.

To do her job at the factory, Mrs. Khan gave up the veil, and she has never encouraged her daughters to even cover their head.  “The veil is to stop strangers from looking at us. Now what’s the use of the veil if I have to work outside or run to the market 10 times?” she said. “My girls never covered their heads, but I didn’t let them go anywhere except school or college and straight back to the house. I have been very strict about that.”

Although Mrs. Khan has been working for more than 10 years, her income has never been enough to provide the comfortable life she is still trying to give her children.  Even now, there are days when the family cannot buy vegetables. “We make do by having roti with pickles or chutney,” she said.

Despite having married her two eldest daughters into well-off homes, Mrs. Khan doesn’t ask them for help. “This is Hindustan. If a son takes care of his mother, it’s okay, but if a daughter helps her mother, she is accused of eating into her husband’s house,” said Mrs. Khan.

“No matter how nice they maybe, but sons-in-law are not your own. As long as my arms and legs are working, I never want my daughter to hear her husband say, ‘I did this for your mother,’ ” she said.

Despite her grueling work, Mrs. Khan is proud to have educated her daughters. Her father and her husband had supported her to complete her education till the 12th grade. “I loved studying and topped in class 10,” she recalled.

Some of her employers have supported her determination to educate her daughters, by giving her extra money to buy books, notebooks and stationery.

While her eldest daughter finished college and the second one studied until the 11th grade, it’s her third daughter, Nazia Khan, who has inherited her mother’s love for studying.

Ms. Khan brought down a plastic box from a shelf lined with schoolbooks. Inside, she has preserved her prized notebooks, projects and drawings from the second grade, which she leafed through and described animatedly. “She had taken commerce so her class 12 results were not too good. Tuitions were necessary, but I couldn’t afford 1,000 rupees for it,” said Mrs. Khan.

Courtesy of Betwa Sharma Nazia Khan at her home in South Delhi.

These days, Ms. Khan is taking computer classes and trying to improve her English in preparation for the entrance exam for law school next year. “I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a child,” she said. “I don’t want to be one of those private lawyers who only make money but a government lawyer. If one has to do a job, then why not do a good job instead of a small one?”

So now Mrs. Khan has to worry about raising 77,000 rupees, which is the annual fee at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi for a five-year law program. “We can think of taking a loan for one year, but how can we for the other four years?” she said.

Her employers said that Mrs. Khan would be wiser to set her daughter on a more practical course like training as a beautician. “Her ambition for her daughter is wonderful to see,” said the wife. “But I also think her children will have a better future with more practical dreams.”

Meanwhile, pressure from relatives in Banda to get Ms. Khan married has been building. “I ignore them,” Mrs. Khan said. “If she becomes a lawyer, the best of boys will fall in line for her.”

Ms. Khan was reconciled to the possibility that law school may not happen for her. She recalled how badly she once wanted to participate in a television show, but the family couldn’t raise 2,000 rupees that were required to build her portfolio.

“It will be great if I can become a lawyer,” she said. “From teaching us the Koran to feeding us, I know how hard my mother has worked for us. And now it’s my turn to take care of her, one way or the other.”

Mrs. Khan is now trying to secure more work for a higher pay. “I have a few more years of work left in me,” she said. “I could work in some more homes, but there are not enough hours left in the day.”

Sending her daughter to law school is her most important challenge yet. But she had faith that some window of opportunity will open. “I work now to fulfill her dreams because they are mine,” she said. “What else is there to live for?”.